Study courses

How class struggle changes the world: sections A7 to B5 A7. Why capitalism produces crises and unemployment. "A gallop of industry, commercial credit and speculation finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began - in the ditch of a crisis... The overwork of some becomes the condition for the idleness of others." Socialism Utopian and Scientific section III . B. How Class Struggle Changes the World B1. Capitalism is only one stage in history, shaped by class struggle. Where does capitalism come from? What other social and economic forms have there been in history? Why is capitalism only a...

Capital, workers, and socialism: sections A1 to A6 A1. Why socialism? What will socialism be like? Is it workable? Is it worth fighting for? The two souls of socialism , by Hal Draper The socialism we fight for , from We Stand For Workers' Liberty "What Marx and Lenin meant by socialism" by Karl Kautsky. "Why capitalism should not survive", AWL article from 1991. Critical comments on Hal Draper . A2. Why is the working class the decisive force for progress? Why the working class, and not just "the poor" or "the people"? What is special about the working class compared to other exploited...

Download as pdf (see "attachment" below), or read on. Capital, workers, and socialism: sections A1 to A6 How class struggle changes the world: sections A7 to B5 The revolutionary outlook: sections C1 to C6 The state and revolution: sections D1 to D8 The AWL and Trotskyism: sections E1 to E8 Glossary

**** Please note Tuesday's session is cancelled. Why The Working Class (originally on Tuesday) replaces Thursday's the session on Anarchism **** This school covers the same broad areas as the AWL week school in July, but each area in a different way, using different texts and different activities - sometimes activities which were in the July school schedule but which we could not do then for lack of time. It will be held in London. To register to attend, contact the AWL office. For a pdf download containing key sections of (but not all) the reading, see "Attachment" below. SESSION 1: SKILLS...

Sessions: 1. Skills 2. Why the working class?/ How to do educationals 3. Marxism and Economism 4. Marxism, Anarchism, and Zapatism 5. The National Question and Israel-Palestine in Particular 6. Debating and arguing This 88-page pdf includes not all the reading, but enough of the core texts listed below to serve as reference during the school. AWL members only: click here for venue and detailed timetable SESSION 1: SKILLS A) Public speaking. Preliminary reading . Brainstorm on dos and don'ts. Practise drafting and delivering speeches on the following points: (i) A lefty teacher has invited you...

You can find the text here . Skip the section headed "By what is the price of a commodity determined?", but do make sure to read the Introduction. 1. What is the difference between labour and labour-power, and why is it important? 2. In an ideal capitalist economy, everything is bought and sold at the going rate - in an equal exchange. Yet inequality is the result. Marx argues that this inequality arises from the exchange in which labour-power is bought and sold. Why? What is special about that exchange? 3. Because of the special features of the sale of labour-power, workers are exploited, i.e...

You can find the text here . Skip the section headed "By what is the price of a commodity determined?", but do make sure to read the Introduction. 1. What is the difference between labour and labour-power, and why is it important? 2. In an ideal capitalist economy, everything is bought and sold at the going rate - in an equal exchange. Yet inequality is the result. Marx argues that this inequality arises from the exchange in which labour-power is bought and sold. Why? What is special about that exchange? 3. Because of the special features of the sale of labour-power, workers are exploitedI i.e...

The IWW was a trade-union organisation, a revolutionary trade-union organisation, founded in 1905 in the USA, whose heyday was between 1905 and 1914. We surveyed the IWW's distinctive organising approaches: industrial unionism (as against craft unionism) energetic class-struggle agitation, propaganda, and agitation low membership fees low or no initiation fees concentrated, high-intensity waves of organising addressing workers in new areas with a set of demands to be won by the union once organised (developed after a lot of preliminary discussion with workers in those areas) rather than with...

Working class and trade unions II: today 1. Fastest-growing categories of employment: USA Henwood gives a list for the USA. None of the 30 top categories is a factory operative/ machine minder category. That does not mean that those workers are disappearing. There are as many car workers in the USA today as in the 1970s. But the fastest growing categories are elsewhere. 2. Poorer countries Factory-operative/ machine-minder jobs are growing in fast-industrialising poorer countries. But Hampton's figures suggest that "service" jobs grow simultaneously and faster. For example, Hampton's figures...